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The article takes stock of works on Vatican diplomacy in the early years of the Cold War. It shows, on the one hand, that the position of the Holy See in the East-West conflict evolved between 1947 and 1957: forced, at first, to espouse the cause of the West in the name of the defense of the Christian civilization, the Vatican of Pius XII seeks, especially from 1951-1952, to find a form of equidistance between the two blocks more in accordance with the policy of impartiality followed during the two world wars. On the other hand, it underlines the existence of competing strategic lines within the Curia : an Atlanticist and resolutely anti-Communist line (that of the cardinals of the Vatican Pentagon); an idealist or tendentially neutralist line (around Mgr Montini, the future Paul VI); a realistic or possibilist line (that of the first section of the secretariat of State).